According to a report by Girl Gamer, the two organizations are developing an education program designed specifically for the Girl Scouts that meets the organization's requirements for skills badges. "Creating this badge will get young girls excited in technology and science and let them know that they, too, can have a career in the video game industry," WIGI Vice President Amy Allison told Girl Gamer.

Currently, the Girl Scouts of the USA offers four official badges in the area of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education—"Science of Happiness" and "Science of Style" badges being the only ones for older scouts. The Boy Scouts introduced a Game Design merit badge in March, but its description doesn't specifically call for actual game software development. The WIGI-GSLA effort will use Gamestar Mechanic, an educational development tool from E-Line Media, to allow scouts to develop and create their own video games.

Making a good game design merit badge seems like a tall order, assuming you mean video games anyway. Nailing the basics of basic video game development seems like the kind of thing that would at least run into the dozens of hours at a minimum, which might be unreasonable for a single badge.

Focusing the badge on board or card game development, where you can pretty easily create makeshift pieces from things you already have in the house, and rules can be spelled out in plain English rather than coded from scratch, seems like it would fit a badge much more easily.

We really need something called "Scouts of the USA". This would not be sexist group (aka, boys and girls allowed).It will not be homophobic. Badges have dependencies. For instance, you cannot get badge B if you did not get Badge A. This will allow members to build up skills and knowledge from the ground up.

I'd love to have had the chance for that kind of badge when I had been in the scouts. Even if the badge is only the barest of fundamentals, anything that helps get girls excited and interested is a welcome development

We really need something called "Scouts of the USA". This would not be sexist group (aka, boys and girls allowed).It will not be homophobic. Badges have dependencies. For instance, you cannot get badge B if you did not get Badge A. This will allow members to build up skills and knowledge from the ground up.

Unless there is a group like this.

There is such an org. Adeventure Scouts. Growing, but still overshadowed by the big two.

We really need something called "Scouts of the USA". This would not be sexist group (aka, boys and girls allowed).It will not be homophobic. Badges have dependencies. For instance, you cannot get badge B if you did not get Badge A. This will allow members to build up skills and knowledge from the ground up.

Not that I have anything against video game design, but if the only two STEM badges available at the highest level are "Science of Happiness" and "Science of Style," I think they need more hard science badges (biology, geology, chemistry, physics, mathematics) before they need video game design.

We really need something called "Scouts of the USA". This would not be sexist group (aka, boys and girls allowed).It will not be homophobic. Badges have dependencies. For instance, you cannot get badge B if you did not get Badge A. This will allow members to build up skills and knowledge from the ground up.

Unless there is a group like this.

There is such an org. Adeventure Scouts. Growing, but still overshadowed by the big two.

Have you checked out the badges for girl scouts in the science area? Science of Style is about fashion and makeup. Seriously.

Was not aware of this and this disappoints me a bit. Perhaps this will go away as a generational thing. Hopefully. I have no problem with chilluns learning about fashion as a subjective matter, but I like to see traditional gender-role-reinforcement disappear.

It warms my heart when I encounter a female that's as or more tech-savvy than myself. The lady running the auto department at my local Wal-Mart is in her 70s, and you won't catch her using dumbed-down terminology unless she needs to in order to explain it to somebody. Intelligent, confident women FTW.

I love these useless symbolic gestures, they make me feel so fuzzy and warm!Of course they don't actually change anything.

The merit badge that the girl scouts really need is the "pushy mom" merit badge. Every girl scout I have seen in the last 5 years is either being forced by her mom to go door-to-door selling cookies, or the mom herself is selling the cookies while the girl looks on from the background.

I prefer the first kind, as it is less annoying to have an unsure girl scout asking if you want to buy cookies while glancing back at her mom every 10 seconds who keeps whispering "don't look back at me. sell the cookies", than having to deal with the mom in your face saying "Hi! Girl Scout Cookie time! How many boxes can I put you down for?"

It's nice progress to see. If nothing else it is giving girls the chance to see this as a viable profession they can be in when they grow up. The scouts (both boy and girl) have their place but it too often feels in the past compared to modern life.

Honestly I love the idea of introducing STEM to as many kids as humanly possible, but... honestly, for both Boys and Girls Scouts, it just seems like such a tacked on and ridiculous type of honor to award them. The scouts have always been about community and civil service and teaching responsibility, but this just kind of has a tinge of industry buy-in and PR and doesn't seem very substantive.

We really need something called "Scouts of the USA". This would not be sexist group (aka, boys and girls allowed).It will not be homophobic. Badges have dependencies. For instance, you cannot get badge B if you did not get Badge A. This will allow members to build up skills and knowledge from the ground up.Unless there is a group like this.

I love these useless symbolic gestures, they make me feel so fuzzy and warm!Of course they don't actually change anything.

These symbolic gestures have the potential to introduce girls to something that they wouldn't think of pursuing otherwise. That in itself is going to change something. Whether it is a significant change or a small change remains to be seen, but we should at least have some optimism.

Good organization for sure, having earned merit badges in Boy Scouts I'd say that the time/effort required to earn a badge is fairly trivial, but they can spark an interest. It's a great time to be a young woman interested in programming, universities are pretty aggressively recruiting women for their CS/CIS/Engineering programs.

I love these useless symbolic gestures, they make me feel so fuzzy and warm!Of course they don't actually change anything.

These symbolic gestures have the potential to introduce girls to something that they wouldn't think of pursuing otherwise. That in itself is going to change something.

Exactly that is what I doubt.

It would be far better to have badges aimed at encouraging girls to learn more about basic science and technology, than to promote a specific career that, relatively speaking, very few people are engaged in anyway.

We really need something called "Scouts of the USA". This would not be sexist group (aka, boys and girls allowed).It will not be homophobic. Badges have dependencies. For instance, you cannot get badge B if you did not get Badge A. This will allow members to build up skills and knowledge from the ground up.

Unless there is a group like this.

There is (was, its been 20 yrs now) a group called Explorers that was part of the BSA. They were co-ed and are often career focused, including one for science. The one I belonged to was more of a generic outdoors type group, but we did a pretty good variety of things. The career Explorers have been realigned under the Learning for Life program, with the rest being put under the Venturing program. More info here:

Making a good game design merit badge seems like a tall order, assuming you mean video games anyway. Nailing the basics of basic video game development seems like the kind of thing that would at least run into the dozens of hours at a minimum, which might be unreasonable for a single badge.

Focusing the badge on board or card game development, where you can pretty easily create makeshift pieces from things you already have in the house, and rules can be spelled out in plain English rather than coded from scratch, seems like it would fit a badge much more easily.

Girl Scouts are already involved in large commitment science activities. My co-worker’s children participate in FIRST Robotic competitions through Girl Scouts. The FIRST activities involve planning, building and programming. Pretty much the same sorts of activities which game development requires. There are platforms like Kodu from Microsoft Research which allow game development without having to spend a lot of time learning a programming language. They probably intend to use something similar.

I love these useless symbolic gestures, they make me feel so fuzzy and warm!Of course they don't actually change anything.

These symbolic gestures have the potential to introduce girls to something that they wouldn't think of pursuing otherwise. That in itself is going to change something.

Exactly that is what I doubt.

It would be far better to have badges aimed at encouraging girls to learn more about basic science and technology, than to promote a specific career that, relatively speaking, very few people are engaged in anyway.

I work with a top game design and development university (#4 on Princeton's list). Yes, there are relatively few people in the industry. I had the same concerns for our students when we started. But, there are a couple things to think about. Programming games is some of the most robust programming you can do. Our gaming students have a far more rigorous coding requirement that even our pure CS major. So students who can program games can find work doing any kind of programming.

Second, games keep student interest. Even if its a simple game, students like being creative. All of our programming courses in ALL of our majors did better when games were introduced in the curriculum. Now maybe its only pong for most students, its still better than the normal crappy examples thet they usually have to work with. That keeps their attention which in turn helps them do better.

Great now game development companies will have an even larger group of people to underpay and overwork...good going Girl Scouts. Why don't you give a badge for development of financial systems applications... you know a field where developers can work a normal business day and get paid a competitive salary without having to fear getting layed off at the end of their project.

Great now game development companies will have an even larger group of people to underpay and overwork...good going Girl Scouts. Why don't you give a badge for development of financial systems applications...

If you're looking for activities your kids can do at home that will also get them badges and allow them to interact with other kids participating, check out DIY.org. They have courses and badges for game & web development, chemistry, camping, biology, fashion, landscaping, illustration and a bunch more (see the full list at https://diy.org/skills).

Honestly I love the idea of introducing STEM to as many kids as humanly possible, but... honestly, for both Boys and Girls Scouts, it just seems like such a tacked on and ridiculous type of honor to award them. The scouts have always been about community and civil service and teaching responsibility, but this just kind of has a tinge of industry buy-in and PR and doesn't seem very substantive.

For the Boy Scouts, at least, the merit badges which are not on the "required for Eagle Scout list" are designed to give the Scout an introduction to a skill, hobby or career that he might not have otherwise encountered. Scouts often end up in careers that they first learned about because they undertook a merit badge in that area. Welding, Dentistry and Aviation are some that come to mind. Based on that, I'd disagree with the notion that they are "tacked on and ridiculous."

I'm not as familiar with the Girl Scouts, but I'd encourage any program that encourages my daughter to learn about science and technology. I'd recommend readers look to the actual requirements of a given badge before leaping to judgement. I'd also point out that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are 100+ year old organizations, and the public has many outdated stereotypes of them. Ars Technica readers would do well to avoid falling prey to that kind of lazy thinking.

While I always try to encourage all students that I TA for (male, female, or otherwise) to pursue their dreams and accept no compromises in their careers, I personally think its very telling that there is such a huge disparity even between the proportion of women in game development and those in CS overall. Personally, I think a major component of this effect is how game developers are treated, as compared to computer scientists in other industries.

Compared to, say, a systems developer or a performance-critical scientific programmer, game developers are pretty much treated like shit. These positions typically cause much more stress and take up far more hours than most computer science careers. However, with the gaming market not doing as well as it once did, there just isn't the reward available for putting in all that effort. Perhaps women are just smarter in avoiding such a career?

Could anyone here honestly tell me they would love to work for a company like EA (salary aside)? The one saving grace for the industry is the indie market, where developers can use their talents for what they originally wanted to do: express their ideas and do something they love. However, unless you get lucky, you're not going to make nearly as much money.

While I always try to encourage all students that I TA for (male, female, or otherwise) to pursue their dreams and accept no compromises in their careers, I personally think its very telling that there is such a huge disparity even between the proportion of women in game development and those in CS overall. Personally, I think a major component of this effect is how game developers are treated, as compared to computer scientists in other industries.

Compared to, say, a systems developer or a performance-critical scientific programmer, game developers are pretty much treated like shit. These positions typically cause much more stress and take up far more hours than most computer science careers. However, with the gaming market not doing as well as it once did, there just isn't the reward available for putting in all that effort. Perhaps women are just smarter in avoiding such a career?

Could anyone here honestly tell me that would love to work for a company like EA (salary aside)? The one saving grace for the industry is the indie market, where developers can use their talents for what they originally wanted to do: express their ideas and do something they love. However, unless you get lucky, you're not going to make nearly as much money.

While I always try to encourage all students that I TA for (male, female, or otherwise) to pursue their dreams and accept no compromises in their careers, I personally think its very telling that there is such a huge disparity even between the proportion of women in game development and those in CS overall. Personally, I think a major component of this effect is how game developers are treated, as compared to computer scientists in other industries.

Compared to, say, a systems developer or a performance-critical scientific programmer, game developers are pretty much treated like shit. These positions typically cause much more stress and take up far more hours than most computer science careers. However, with the gaming market not doing as well as it once did, there just isn't the reward available for putting in all that effort. Perhaps women are just smarter in avoiding such a career?

Could anyone here honestly tell me that would love to work for a company like EA (salary aside)? The one saving grace for the industry is the indie market, where developers can use their talents for what they originally wanted to do: express their ideas and do something they love. However, unless you get lucky, you're not going to make nearly as much money.

I don't see how these badges further the mission of either organization. I thought they were about practical skills and REAL WORLD preparation.

Part of preparing you for the real world is helping you figure out where you want to end up in life. Also, how in hell is game development not a practical skill? Have you SEEN how much those people make?

I don't see how these badges further the mission of either organization. I thought they were about practical skills and REAL WORLD preparation.

Part of preparing you for the real world is helping you figure out where you want to end up in life. Also, how in hell is game development not a practical skill? Have you SEEN how much those people make?

If its just about making money in the real world, then there are many different badges for girls (and boys too) that these family oriented organizations might want to consider as well.

I don't see how these badges further the mission of either organization. I thought they were about practical skills and REAL WORLD preparation.

Part of preparing you for the real world is helping you figure out where you want to end up in life. Also, how in hell is game development not a practical skill? Have you SEEN how much those people make?